We began by the Old Parliament, which is now a museum and art gallery. More interestingly, in front of the building, is the Aboriginal tent embassy, which was established in 1972 as a protest against the denial of land-rights and self-determination of the Aboriginal people. It literally is just a few tents, a dilapidated caravan and a log fire, which has supposedly never stopped burning. A few snaps later and we moved on to visit the first art galleries of our trip; the national portrait gallery and national gallery of Australia. Neither Andrea or I are big art lovers, but some of the stuff in the portrait gallery, in particular, was pretty interesting. Our tour ended at the new Parliament building, which sits on ‘Capital Hill’. The architecture is very impressive and the views from the rooftop were spectacular. Canberra has been designed so that 8-9 roads run straight out for several miles from the centre of the hill. So standing on the top of the parliament building really feels like you are in the centre of Australia!
We stopped off briefly in the main shopping district of Canberra, to have a look, but were disappointed at how quiet it was at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. We didn’t hang around long and headed back to the hostel in Dickson. Here the high street was a hive of activity, much like St Kilda, but much more manageable. There are quite a few Asian restaurants on the strip and we stopped off at a Chinese restaurant for dinner, which was great. Much better after our Chinese disaster in Melbourne.
Tomorrow we are heading back to the parliament building to sit in on our first ever parliamentary proceedings. The subject is the emissions trading scheme (ETS - its all over the news at the moment in Australia) in light of the Copenhagen summit approaching in the next few weeks. Could be interesting or incredibly boring. We’ll soon find out!!
we sat in on parliament too - think its a good experience and they seem to take quite frequent breaks if you want to leave !!! enjoy the rest of your time in Canberra xx
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty interesting although we didn't stay a massive amount of time. I was quite relieved we weren't forced to sit through the whole thing!
ReplyDeletePS You can tell you used the same lonely planet as we are!!